Campbell P. Power and Politics in Old Regime France, 1720-1745

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been openly challenged and the King had resorted to what some called despotic

acts. The pattern was to become a familiar one during the last decades of the

regime. A chronological table of the most important events in the dispute is

provided in Appendix 3, pp. 326–7.

Historians have put forward various views of the nature and significance of the

conflict with the parlement in the 1730s. These views are the touchstone for their

wider assessments of Fleury’s rule. French scholars writing during the anti-clerical

years of the Third Republic regarded Fleury as a religious bigot. Flammermont

characterised Fleury as an ambitious fanatic.

Rocquain thought him responsible for

opening the door to the Revolution, if not actually causing it, by forcing the

Jansenists into politics.

Fleury’s administration was fatal to France. It was fatal because of the

excessive power left for too long in the hands of a man weakened by age; it

was fatal through the intolerance that this prelate brought to religious affairs,

an intolerance that was the main and almost unique characteristic of his long

ministry. By drawing the Jansenists into politics, it prepared the way for the

revolution.

Both of these historians regarded the parlement as rightfully defending the gallican

church and the maxims of state against the attacks of an ultramontane ministry. In

short, they believed the claims of the Jansenists and the parlement. Much later,

Shennan also argued the crisis was damaging to the prestige of the monarchy. He

saw Fleury as ‘willing to bend with the wind, to use the king’s legislative power

pragmatically as a tactical weapon’.

He endorsed the opinion expressed by

Lacretelle, an early nineteenth-century historian, that the disputes witnessed ‘a

progressive decline of royal authority’. Arbitrary government was from 1730 to

1732 rightly resisted by the parlement which was doing no more than fulfilling its

role as defender of the legal traditions of France. ‘In the course of his ministry,

Fleury effected a revolution. By ignoring or contradicting Gallican traditions, which

hitherto had safeguarded the king and individual Frenchmen against ultramontane

pressure, he not only reduced the authority of the crown vis-à-vis the spiritual

powers, he deprived it of one of its firmest supports.’

In a still broader context, this

particular crisis has been predictably interpreted in general histories, by Glasson

and Egret, as a stage in the political resurgence of the Paris parlement after 1715.

Although this latter view is nearer the mark, it can only be accepted if the meaning

of political resurgence is rewritten to take into account different historical processes

and different motivation.

All of these views are characterised by a condemnation of the role of the

ministry, even though none of the historians had carried out a detailed study of the

policies of the central government in this period. Their conclusions are based only

upon inferences drawn from their study of the parlement’s attacks on the ministerial

policy and from the royal replies given to these, combined with the conclusions of

the monograph by Georges Hardy which is now open to modification.

The study

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of three neglected aspects in particular would do much to modify the picture: first,

it is particularly important to examine the views within the parlement as they were

expressed in actual debate; second, to look much more closely at the conduct of the

ministry; and third, to consider the personal and institutional strategies involved.

The answers to these questions should in turn shed some new light on the nature of

this confrontation and others like it.

Thus, a full reassessment of the situation is possible only by practising a wider

and perhaps new kind of political history. It is important to pay close attention to the

whole range of factors, from the long-term corporatist attitudes or mentalité of the

participants and the structures of politics, to the real details and pressures of the

situation as it evolved almost from day to day. A ‘total history’ of politics is required,

for there can be no satisfactory partial view, such as an analysis of parlementary

‘ideology’ divorced from the whole context, because everything was inextricably

bound together, multi-faceted, and our own separate categories of analysis were by

no means those of the early eighteenth century. In what follows, it has been

impossible to separate the analysis of the mechanisms of ministerial control over the

parlement during this period of crisis from the nature of the crisis itself in its

religious, legal and political implications. The structure of the crisis was bound up

with the very mechanisms, procedures, ways of thought, interests and calculations

of both ministers and magistrates.

By good fortune, much more detailed evidence of the debates in the plenary

sessions has survived than is usual later in the century. Much of it was collected by

Jansenists who were keen to trace the progress of their cause, and probably felt a

need to bear witness to their faith. The result is that names are mentioned where

they are generally left out by more cautious writers in the 1750s, and so it is possible

to undertake what might be called an English-style ‘parliamentary’ history of the

courts. The study of the speeches and voting figures enables us to identify the

activists and unravel their strategies. The results cast as much doubt on the idea that

magistrates were unanimous in their views as does any chapter of the history of the

House of Commons about Members of Parliament. It similarly allows us to trace

the operation of parti or faction within the institution.

When considering the formation and enactment of policy it is important to take

into account the way in which the ministers perceived the problems which faced

them, whatever the historical reality of the situation may have been, because policy

can as easily be the product of misunderstandings and miscalculations as of a sound

assessment of the situation. Equally, since governments of this period rarely had a

free hand in the enactment of policy, the extra-ministerial pressures they suffered

and the practical limitations of their power in pursuing their aims must be

considered. It is therefore important to know why it was that the ministry adopted

the course it did in 1730, when this step was bound to provoke the parlement. Was

it simply a question of religious bigotry or were deeper issues involved?

As we have seen, the cardinal de Fleury’s attitude to Jansenism was that it had to

be combated by a reduction of its centres of strength, so that it did not threaten

schism in the Gallican church. Although there were bigots who were determined to

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have a Jesuitical position triumph, this was far from being the position of the

Cardinal and his counsellors. Since the appellant movement was limited in scope to

a very small percentage of the French clergy, with few bishops involved, it was wiser

to use a combination of pressure and interdiction. At stake was the unitary

conception of the French church, on which the monarchy rested, and a sense of

respect for hierarchy.

The ministry was better informed and more aware of what was going on than its

continual problems would suggest. Ministerial policy was the product both of long-

standing attitudes on the nature of royal responsibility and of the nature of the

problems to be dealt with. In its attitude to the Jansenists, the central government

was very much in the tradition of the seventeenth century. It is possible to detect

shades of Richelieu’s obsession with Saint-Cyran, the attitude which Bossuet

described as ‘the phantom of Jansenism’ and which also affected Louis XIV.

Various government letters and memoirs written in the 1730s make it clear that the

ministry regarded Jansenists as a dangerous organised minority, tending to produce

civil disobedience, whose quarrel with the Bull Unigenitus was liable to provoke the

sort of theological debate which would lead to schism in the French church. At that

time schism was one of those words that had a powerful resonance of the religious

strife a century before. A memoir from the papers of Maurepas clearly expresses the

fear of a religious war if the conflict were not quieted.

On two occasions Fleury is

known to have explicitly linked the Jansenist movement to Protestantism. In a letter

to the Pope on 23 October 1730 he wrote that if the government attacked them too

directly, ‘They would join up with the Calvinists, from whom they scarcely differ,

and who are unfortunately still only too numerous and too powerful in France. It is

certain that we would then see a reappearance of the dreadful troubles that

disrupted France for more than a century, and there can be no doubt about their

intentions’.

In December 1731 the author of a memoir expressed concern that the debate

over Unigenitus was giving rise to a quarrel over the respective limits of the spiritual

and temporal powers, which would threaten public order. ‘Anything that tends to

trouble the harmonious relationship [between the spiritual and temporal powers]

can only be regarded as an obstacle to public order, and this is to be feared from the

disputes which have recently broken out over the nature, scope and limits of the two

powers.’

The ministry then regarded the anti-constitutionnaires as a party whose

opinions and activities were potentially dangerous to the church and state. Their

effective clandestine organisation for the printing and distribution of tracts and the

Nouvelles ecclésiastiques and for the protection of their agents,

produced fears that

they were a threat to order in the state. Their existence was a permanent defiance of

royal authority. In the mind of Fleury and his colleagues, obedience to the authority

of the church was inseparable from obedience to the authority of the state.

Furthermore, it was an old maxim, reaffirmed by the policy of Louis XIV towards

the Huguenots and by a more recent edict in 1724, that unity of religion was of

crucial importance in the Catholic monarchy. Therefore the aims of the

government in the 1730s were the traditional ones of preserving order in the church

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and state. Because the threat to order and authority stemmed from those groups

which were opposed to the Bull Unigenitus, it was thought logical to uphold the Bull

and to persecute its opponents, especially since they were, until the outbreak of

miracles, in a relatively small minority. Even so, the ministers were well aware that

there were dangers in unlimited persecution,

and so the aim was to destroy the

centres which propagated anti-constitutionnaire views and to exile or send to

seminaries those who remained recalcitrant. The policy was harsh, but it was also

coherent and logical.

The continuity of ministerial policy since the Regency on the question of the

Bull Unigenitus must also be emphasised. If the declaration of 1720 is interpreted not

as a final attempt to settle the status of the Bull but as a tactical manoeuvre designed

to isolate the extremists, as has been suggested above, then Fleury was continuing a

policy formulated before he came to power. It can be established that the

persecution after 1720 was the product of both the evident bankruptcy of the

moderate policy of trying to solve the controversy by means of negotiated

explanations and a pressing desire to improve relations with Rome once the alliance

with Spain had been formed.

Unfortunately, it is not known whether the Regent

and Dubois understood the deeper significance of the controversy for the future

stability of the French church, and so the question of how far Fleury differed in

perception must remain open.

However, it is now clear that the declaration of 24 March should be seen not as

an extreme and bigoted departure from previous policy, but as an attempt at one

more step in the relatively successful policy which had been followed with ever-

increasing commitment, as successive alternatives proved unsatisfactory, since 1718.

By pronouncing the Bull Unigenitus to be a ‘dogmatic judgement of the Universal

Church by virtue of the general consent of the episcopate’ and a law of state, the

declaration attempted to resolve the quarrel by imposing on the recalcitrant

minority the view of the great majority. However, by using the phrase ‘dogmatic

judgment of the Universal Church’, Fleury avoided the controversial and much

more positive phrase ‘rule of faith’—thus leaving himself some room for

manœuvre.

In attempting to pursue a consistent policy, the ministry had to confront

resistance from both the Jansenists and their opponents. From the first, it faced

almost as great a problem in its relations with the constitutionnaires as with the

opponents of the Bull. Very little research has been done on the constitutionnaire

bishops in this period, the doctrinal Jansenists having captured the limelight, but it is

important to make some general points about the group which formed the greater

part of the French episcopate. The constitutionnaires may broadly be divided into

three groups, according to their attitudes to the Bull Unigenitus.

The first may be described as the ‘politiques’. It was composed of men like

Tressan, who was archbishop of Rouen, the cardinal de Rohan and the first

minister himself. These members of the episcopate were more sensitive to the

political consequences of the theological debate to the stability of both the French

church and the monarchy than they were to the merits of the theological arguments

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put in defence of Unigenitus. Tressan and Fleury were almost purely political

advocates of the Bull and they refrained from making any theological statements on

the matter. It will be remembered that in 1713, when he had quickly accepted the

Bull, Fleury wrote an instruction in which he argued that one had to accept it in

order to preserve unity in the church, because quarrels were more damaging than

the Bull itself. As we have seen earlier, in the 1720s he was convinced that, faced

with bigotry on both sides, any explanation or modification of Unigenitus would be

a mistake. Such compromises would inevitably outrage one side or the other and

would never placate the fiercest hotheads. The long-term solution was therefore to

reduce the number of active Jansenists and other opponents of the Bull by means of

lending governmental authority to episcopal pressure.

With these considerations in mind the ‘politiques’ encouraged, through the

activities of the conseil de conscience and the patronage of the feuille des bénéfices, the

moderate groups in the church whom a French historian has dubbed ‘le tiers

parti’.

‘What Fleury is happy to find with the prelates of the third party, is the spirit

of pacification.’

In his role as distributor of benefices he gave them dioceses (some

bishops even replaced others who had been over-zealous in their adherence to the

Bull), and they were likely to follow a policy which tried to avoid brushes with both

Jansenists and zealots.

A second group of constitutionnaires is typified by such prelates as Vintimille,

whom Fleury had appointed to the archbishopric of Paris in 1729, and the cardinal

de Bissy. Both of them appear to have been very much in favour of the Bull for

theological reasons and against Jansenists in their role as defenders of the hierarchy

of the church, but they were nevertheless willing to recognise the political aspects of

the question. They usually co-operated closely with the ministry but were not

averse to using pressure at times to oblige the council to support them more strongly

then it would perhaps have liked.

They were therefore tractable but difficult, if

indispensable, allies.

Finally, there existed a category of very extreme constitutionnaires

characterised by bishops like those of Laon and Arles and the archbishop of

Embrun, Tencin. All were extremists, but for different reasons. Contemporaries

were well aware that Tencin who was not yet a cardinal was excessively ambitious

and that he was trying to win favour with the Pope in the hope of acquiring a

cardinal’s red hat. As early as 1729 he was caballing with other bishops to have

Unigenitus declared a rule of faith in the French church, and in 1730 Fleury had

Mme de Tencin, his sister, exiled for stirring up the constitutionnaire bishops who

had congregated in Paris before the Assembly of the Clergy, which was to be held

in the autumn.

Other zealots like Arles and Laon were of more genuine

theological conviction; indeed, Etienne de La Fare, bishop of Laon had

distinguished himself during the Marseilles plague of 1720 for his selfless

devotion to the diocese which he then held.

When reading the letters written to Laon by Fleury from 1726 to 1740 it

gradually becomes apparent that Laon had become quite obsessed by the

theological controversy and had developed something resembling paranoia as far as

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the Jansenists were concerned. He attributed all his misfortunes to the machinations

of the Jansenists, even believing them responsible for his lamentable financial

situation! He was utterly blind to the political consequences of his continuous

stream of vitriolic pamphlets, mandements, instructions and pastoral and open letters.

In his relations with Fleury he was often quite duplicitous, because he was not

above sometimes printing and distributing at once the full text of works which he

had submitted to the Cardinal for approval and which Fleury had either censured

or asked to be extensively modified before their publication. There were even

occasions when he sent a manuscript to Fleury for comment, other copies to Paris at

the same time, then published it before he had received Fleury’s criticism—and yet

still publicly announced that the minister had approved of it.

As is clear from the correspondence with Laon, the more extreme zealots

constituted a real problem for the ministry. Since 1727, if not before, constant and

often fruitless efforts were made to ensure that all writings touching in any way on

the dispute over Unigenitus were submitted to the conseil de conscience for approval. In

this way Fleury hoped to dampen the enthusiasm of the more violent and to foresee

trouble before it arose. When this system sometimes failed to operate owing to the

disregard of it by such as Laon, the ministry was nevertheless forced to take action

both against the subsequent Jansenist retaliation and in defence of the

constitutionnaire in question. The following letter from Fleury to Laon makes clear

the predicament of the government.

You always complain, Sir, that we want to sacrifice you, and no one has

considered it for a moment. You will remember the express promise you gave

me not to have anything printed without having first sent it to me, and we now

learn that to the prejudice of your word, a mandement has appeared, written by

you, which is reminiscent of the one suppressed by the parlement. If you had

been kind enough to do me the honour of writing to me about it, I should have

have urged you to do nothing with it since it could be of no use, and said that on

the contrary it would cause renewed trouble. What will be done to suppress it

will be so measured and so circumspect that your doctrine could never be

impugned in the slightest. You ask me to let the parlement act, but can you

imagine the consequences, and isn’t it wiser, both for yourself and the

episcopate, to avoid scenes that could become extremely dangerous?

In fact it was, for reasons of diplomacy, very difficult to suppress the writings of the

constitutionnaires because the authors were being too zealous only in their

advocacy of the cause which the ministry itself also supported (if for different

reasons) and because the Pope also supported them. On the other hand, the

activities of the zealots were partly responsible for the involvement of the Paris

parlement in the theological battle. This came about through the legal system of

appeals comme d’abus to the tribunal of the parlement against an alleged abuse of

ecclesiastical authority in the state. If the appeal was from a Jansenist against a

constitutionnaire, the ministry was more or less obliged, for political reasons, to

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uphold the troublesome zealot by evoking the case from the parlement to the royal

council.

This situation will become clearer if the attitude of the ministry to the

parlement is considered.

In March 1730 after the forced registration, in a lit de justice, of Unigenitus as a law

of state, when the parlement refused to accept it as such, Fleury interpreted their

actions as both a defiance of royal authority and a resurgence of the old quarrel

between the jurisdiction of the parlements and that of the church. On 1 August

1730 he wrote to Daguesseau:

In truth all human patience and prudence come to nothing against what the

parlement is doing every day. They are openly raising the standard of revolt

against the authority of the church and the King; they have decided to

destroy episcopal jurisdiction and you are too well informed, Sir, not to

foresee the awful consequences; Monsieur the archbishop of Paris is wronged

and the church no less so.

The author of a memoir dated 26 May 1733 was of the opinion that the parlement

intended to destroy the Bull Unigenitus. Thus it was essential to the dignity of the

monarch, to the good of the religion and the state, that the courts be subject to the

orders of the King.

The marquis d’Argenson wrote a letter which he hoped to

publish in defence of the government on 1 August 1732, supposedly from an English

Member of Parliament to a parlementaire. It paints a picture of the parlements as

bulwarks of intrigue against the wishes of the crown and the ministers, and denies that

they represented any sort of expression of the people or liberties. He reveals a

scheming institution which is trying to usurp the rights of the crown. The zeal of the

parlement is misplaced, he argues, because the courts are not in possession of all the

necessary information, and therefore should not meddle in public policy. Royal

evocations are no more than a defensive measure by the King against the meddling of

the parlement in ‘la grande politique’.

Certainly, this was designed to be

propaganda, but it also reflected the ministerial point of view. A memoir on the

situation in 1731 also emphasised the possibility of intrigues and concerted action by

the anti-constitutionnaires which was reflected in the parlement.

They generate supposed miracles and warmly embrace private disputes in

order to have the chance to debate dangerous questions. Far from restraining

the populace, the parlements of the kingdom are giving them a lead, and

making them hope for assistance. They conceal their obstinacy behind the

specious pretext of defending the liberties of the gallican church and the holy

rights of the crown; they put forward maxims that were unknown to their

predecessors and which are disastrous for Religion; they are making use of an

authority accorded by the king against the orders of the king himself.

One line of interpretation has it that the ministry was acting in an arbitrary or

despotic fashion with regard to the parlement. But this is arguable. Some of the

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government responses to the claims of the parlement may have seemed harsh

and uncompromising, but there should be no doubt that the ministry was

pursuing a carefully considered and legally defensible policy. It was just that the

crown was once again insisting on one interpretation of its rights when the

parlement was insisting on another, and normally neither side pushed its claims

to the limit.

Raison d’état had left the government defending and upholding a Bull which was,

from the point of view of its content, on rational and theological grounds, not the

most easily defensible statement against Jansenism. As we have seen, on its first

publication Unigenitus became both a symbol for the royal government (because it

had been requested by Louis XIV) and a focal point of resistance for the Jansenists.

The latter were, unfortunately from the point of view of the government, allied with

some Gallicans who were not necessarily also Jansenists,

but who were offended

by the promulgation of a papal Bull in France without the legal formalities which

many desired. By 1729 the ministry, being of the opinion that enforcement of the

Bull was the wisest course, was determined not to give the parlement an

opportunity to sabotage this policy if it decided to interfere. It should be emphasised

that the government did not go into the situation blindly: there was full awareness

that problems with the parlement were likely if evocations were used in order to

prevent the operation of the system of appeals comme d’abus from becoming an

effective instrument of the Jansenist cause.

Long before the wrath of the parlement against evocations manifested itself,

Fleury and Daguesseau had discussed the matter. They foresaw that evocations

would probably lead to remonstrances, but could see no other viable legal course

of action, in view of their policy. Their first preference was for the use of discreet

pressure on the parlement in the hope that it would refuse to act, and this was

successful during much of 1729. However, the affair of the six curés of Orléans

who refused to publish a mandement of their bishop, proved to be something of a

test case. Daguesseau conferred with the First President of the parlement about

the various ways to prevent the courts from interfering in the dispute, and then

reported to Fleury. ‘In truth, if it were thought wise to tie the parlement’s hands,

that could only be done by revoking the case to the council, otherwise there

would be some form of denial of justice which would kindle the flame instead of

putting it out.’

He pointed out that evocations were likely to give rise to

remonstrances but that, on the other hand, there were good reasons for resorting

to an evocation in a situation where the ordinary course of justice was likely to

excite disturbances contrary to the tranquillity of the state.

In June 1729 Fleury

wrote a letter to the Chancellor in which he revealed his attitude to the problem.

He felt that the curés were breeding sedition in the church and that there could be

no hope for a lasting peace while such insubordination lasted. He thought that

there was not an absolutely clear case for an appeal comme d’abus and that every

effort ought to be made to stop the parlement from accepting such an appeal.

On 27 August he wrote again, agreeing that it was not in general fitting to

interfere with private justice, but expressing doubts that the parlement could be

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trusted to act ‘wisely’; there the curés would be treated favourably and the bishop

of Orléans condemned in all he had done.

Nothing could be more dangerous than to allow this affair to go through the

ordinary judicial procedures, for there is no doubt that the Council of

Embrun will be brought into it [with] a few mandements from the bishops and

even the one by M.d’Orléans, which will be malignly interpreted, and from

which all the consequences it pleased the lawyers to draw, even falsely, could

be implied… The only solution is to evoke it, and after weighing up the pros

and cons, I think that we should not hesitate to take this course, although I

admit it would be better to avoid it if at all possible.

If consultation were to fail, then there would be no alternative to an evocation: ‘raison

d’état must be above all other arguments’.

Far from acting arbitrarily, whether one

defines that term as meaning ‘at random’ or ‘without proper preparation’ or ‘without

due regard to the legal processes’, the ministry of Fleury, acting at all times on the

expert advice of Daguesseau and Chauvelin, and later aided by the researches and

opinions of d’Argenson and Courchetet,

made every effort to act in a legal manner.

The reactions of the government were ad hoc only in the sense that any response to a

specific and original situation must be so, and it cannot fairly be argued that the

government was not following a consistent set of principles with clear aims.

* * *

In order to clarify the basis of conflict between the ministry and the parlement, it

therefore becomes necessary to ask anew why and on what grounds the parlement

opposed the ministerial policy on Unigenitus. As with the government, a full

discussion of the attitude of the parlement must await consideration of the day-to-

day politics of the affair, to be discussed later in this chapter, but some important

general points can be made at this stage.

The strictly legal stance taken by the parlement and the chief objections to the

ministerial actions were explained in the remonstrances and arrêtés which were

unusually frequent in this period. A study of the speeches made by various

counsellors and of the motions voted upon in debates actually reveals that much more

extreme claims were made than ever found their way into the official

pronouncements, but that these were the views of a tiny minority. After the royal

declaration of March 1730, the parlementaire argument was directed against the

status of the Bull Unigenitus as being the root of the problem. They objected to the

manner of the registration, but the particular objection, the basic one, was to the

condemnation in the Bull of the ninety-first proposition allegedly to be found in the

book of Quesnel. It stated that fear of an unjust excommunication should not prevent

one from doing one’s duty. Therefore, to jurists in France, the condemnation of this

was an implied affront because it seemed to suggest the idea that a subject could be

absolved from his duty to the King by a papal excommunication. This would

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recognise a papal right which would be detrimental to the power of the monarchy (for

might not an excommunicated king be murdered by a fanatic as a tyrant, for example,

as in 1610?) and Gallicanism was a strongly held tradition in the Paris parlement.

The royal declaration of 1730 therefore highlighted the potential differences between

royal policy and the views of the parlement. Acceptance of Unigenitus, it was claimed,

would establish the doctrine of papal infallibility in France and was thus a threat to the

temporal power of the crown. The remonstrances of 25 July 1731 protested that the

government evocations and acceptance of the Bull were endangering the throne and

claimed that this was opening a sure and easy way to build up the power of the church

on the ruins of royal authority.

The year 1731 saw the development of the question of the respective limits of the

temporal and spiritual powers in the state, because the appeals comme d’abus upheld

by the parlement were almost without exception against pronouncements or

persecution by the constitutionnaire bishops. As the representative of the civil

powers and defender of its own judicial prerogatives the parlement was entering

into a typical ancien régime conflict of jurisdiction, and in this case it was with the

bishops—as it very often had been in the past. The parlement was, of course, being

more Gallican than the King in raising the issue of the limits of the two powers at a

time when the possibility of a lessening of the independence of the monarch vis-à-vis

the papacy did not strike the ministry as being a real danger.

There had always been an element of expediency in the royal appeal to Gallican

sentiment in France, and since the 1690s the crown had been more in alliance with the

papacy than against it.

The Gallican Articles of 1682 which continued to be taught in

the schools were therefore developing into an embarrassment for royal policy because

by the eighteenth century ministers regarded the papacy as a potentially useful ally.

Thus, from the government’s point of view, the argument of the parlement was alarmist

and purely theoretical because papal influence in France had not increased as a result of

Unigenitus.

Again, the remonstrance of 18 August 1731 tends to base its argument on

the situation which might possibly (or would ineluctably) result from a wider use of

royal evocations, if they operated in such a way that clerics felt encouraged by legal

immunity to refuse the sacraments. They claimed that the evocation of the affair of the

cure of Orléans (on the subject of which an arrêt of the parlement had been annulled)

was dangerous because it would encourage others to act as he had done: ‘To destroy the

arrêt of your parlement would be to authorise the ecclesiastics of your Kingdom to

follow the dangerous example of the cure, to imitate his reiterated refusals to administer

the last sacraments to a dying woman’. The same remonstrances warn that ‘a blind zeal

for the Bull Unigenitus tends to erect it arbitrarily as a rule of faith, to maintain that it is a

spiritual matter which does not depend on royal authority, thus to attack the most

essential rights of your sovereignty’.

In its pure legalism this argument did not take into account any steps taken

by the crown itself to prevent the proliferation of such excesses. Fleury’s longer-

term policy of ecclesiastical appointments and pressure on the bishops to submit

controversial decisions to him before their execution or publication was

naturally ignored by the parlement.

The reply by the crown to the